


Synthetic Nightmares

by Anchorsify



Category: X-Men (Comicverse), X-Men (Movieverse), X-Men - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Dreams vs. Reality, F/M, Fluff, Reality Bending, Self-Harm, some gore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 10:42:23
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28759023
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anchorsify/pseuds/Anchorsify
Summary: Wanda has a nightmare about things bottled up and Piotr tries to wake her up while being afflicted with chaos magic, and both of them have to come to terms with aspects of themselves they try to forget.
Relationships: Wanda Maximoff/Piotr Rasputin
Kudos: 3





	Synthetic Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> This is a rough work that I may or may not try to edit in post to get a better flow and add some edges to specific points, but I wanted to get out this Piotr/Wanda ship-fic before WandaVision releases because I'm all in for their angst but didn't want to seem like I'm just copying the show. Which I guess I sort of am anyway in the sense of I love exploring her trauma and imperfect nature and the ways in which her powers can express that involuntarily, but the ways in which Piotr deals with it and cares for her despite it all are wholly my fanon, I suppose. It's vague enough to be AU and work for movie- or comic-verse but I do like their comic backstories and that is somewhat included, so it leans that way. 
> 
> Hope you enjoy, as always comments/criticism are appreciated. It's probably obvious, but it's been a while since I've done any fanfiction, I know I have rust to scrape off with my writing.

They had dinner together but went to sleep separately, not from a lack of trying; They just happened to eat close to a robbery, and she was officially on sabbatical from SHIELD and the Avengers and supposedly vacationing in Europe. Being spotted by the news meant they’d lose the rest of their week together.. not to mention have to face some difficult questions neither wanted to answer just yet. So he paid for their meal while ordering dessert, and she got to eat it alone and then get an early start on a good night’s rest while he played hero.

Or so he had assumed, upon finding her covered to her ears in blankets. He undressed to his boxers to match her and lifted one side of the covers to join her, but the immediate movement from her when she’d seemed asleep told him all he needed to know about how the night had gone alone. They were both prone to getting lost in their own heads, left to their own devices.

He kissed her hair and draped an arm around her, giving himself just enough time to glimpse her arms and legs before the sheets drifted back down over them both—There were marks there that hadn’t been two days ago, and he knew he should ask, but he didn’t have the heart to wake her up just to make her face something that was hard to put into words to begin with.

“Prosti,” He whispered, knowing he woke her up with the sudden cold of shifting blankets. He was just too big to sneak into them without it being noticeable. “I’m here, Wanda.” Large digits settled for brushing away stray strands from her face while he tried to think of what to say in the morning to address it without directly addressing it.

“Mmh.. How’d it go?” She scooted in toward his warmth without opening her eyes and he helped her with a palm at her back, guiding her in against the broad frame of his front.

“They gave up instead of reload.” One magazine to test metal skin and they realized they had hit the wrong place at the wrong time, and that was that.

“I can do some sewing tomorrow.” He knew she’d been too tired to be lecherous while he was undressing, but it didn’t dawn on him for almost a full minute that she was just assuming—correctly—that it was necessary, and making the offer. And that just had him wrap his arm around her a little more.

“Nyet. We have theater.” They’d bought new, matching sets of formal wear for it, and they rarely got to go out together period. He wasn’t about to waste the opportunity.

She made a muffled sound that would have been a protest, were it not for the fact that she seemed so ready to drift off to sleep, and he didn’t respond to it beyond the idle wandering of a hand to help soothe her the rest of the way there. He wasn’t good at confrontation, but the marks he’d seen were what was really on his mind. He spent several minutes thinking of how to best address it come morning before compromising with himself and reaching for his phone to set an alarm early enough to make her breakfast before heading back to the mansion; she was on vacation, but he wasn’t. He didn’t have a good reason to take off the week of mid-February and there were plenty of legitimate couples that did, and he didn’t want to be subject to more gossip than normal. He didn’t like lying to his friends and didn’t have the fortitude to stay quiet whenever questioned by them when they discovered he was keeping secrets of the relationship variety, so he settled for the long drive to and from the city for what time they could steal away together.

“Ya s toboy, detka,” He whispered to her, a quiet reassurance to help ease her through the night until he could reinforce it with omelets to prove it to her. For a few hours they both slept, neither peaceful, until he awoke from the chill of winter air beneath him.

Beneath?

He opened his eyes and shifted his arm out from underneath her head where she’d made a pillow out of his bicep, sitting up to find the both of them floating three feet above their bed, sheets still atop them both. There was an aurora of crimson emanating from her and it took him a moment to blink and rub his eyes to make sure he _was_ seeing what he thought he was, before he reached out to touch her face and—

And was forcefully jettisoned away, slammed into the far wall with an immediate yielding of drywall to reveal the metal lining underneath. He hit the ground on his knees, now excluded from whatever aura Wanda was subconsciously utilizing to remain floating.

“Wanda—”

He mouthed the word, he was **certain** his vocal cords were vibrating like normal and that he was speaking, but no sound came forth. He grabbed at the wall, and watched as the sheet rock splintered, was crushed within his grasp, falling to the ground as dust in complete silence. He should have known something was wrong when he saw the marks, should have known to speak up—

And now he couldn’t.

And she was glowing red, her power manifesting while she slept. Dreamed. Faced whatever nightmare that seemed so inescapable now for them both; there was a door, but he refused to consider using it.

He took a step and triggered some sort of trap, as undulating streaks of red shot out from her still-sleeping form and seared all that they touched, burning away at their bedroom mirror, at the entrance to their bathroom, at the free weights he kept on the floor and her own slippers.

“Wanda, _stop—!_ ” He shouted in futility; The room burned but remained stilled, and his second step forward had him looking down to muster the strength to continue in his advance, having to utilize all his vast strength to combat whatever force was pushing against him, trying to keep him from her.

And then he noticed that his foot was not bare and metallic as it should be, but.. smooth, digitless, a metal completely unlikely his own. He looked to the mirror and found, staring back at him at two dozen different angles from the splintered glass, was the face of Ultron.

And then a streak of red hit him, and he realized that he’d done the right thing in telling Illyana about what they were up to, as there was a pressure in his head like both of his ears just popped and even though he **knew** there was no sound allowed within the room, there was a migraine-inducing ringing in his ears that had him reach both hands up to cup them, just in time to see the glow of repulsors as silver turned to a cherry red, eyes and chest aglow. The handiwork of his sister, enchanting him to ward off mental intrusion that had Wanda’s psyche going only off of the physical when it couldn’t get into his mind like it wanted, like it was _still trying_ , to deduce just which enemy to turn him into and which regret to make her combat in her sleep—in _his_ reality—with her own mind none the wiser. In its defeat it settled with a shifting of one metal foe to another, as red became a dull matte blue and purple, and looking back at him was the face of so many of the robots he’d had to fight over the years. 

His stomach tightened in a knot, seeing himself as a Sentinel, but with another glance down at his own legs, he recognized the systems for what they were.. and willed them to work as her reality allowed them to. The propulsion jets on the soles of mutant-hunters allowed him to continue his advance, his jaw tightening at the undeniable _sickness_ felt as a tendril of chaos magic struck his torso and seared away at the outer hull of his current form to reveal the circuity beneath, burning away at wires and connecting tubes and hoses and he didn’t know that a Sentinel could feel **pa** **in** and yet it felt so agonizing and he wasn’t sure if he could keep his legs from faltering, even knowing the systems for torso and legs were separated as he tried to scream, but couldn’t, not even the modulated voice of the automaton he was able to be heard—

And then he changed again, slammed back into the reinforced plating of their bedroom’s apartment so hard it dented outward and broke the drywall on the other side as he was abruptly denied the jets at his feet that was allowing his advance. He looked down and found himself caped in yellow, a red gem in his chest, green along his limbs and he knew immediately what to do, even though he’d had but two conversations with the synthetic man he became. 

Mutation and nanomachines were hardly similar, and yet the way in which Vision could increase his density was remarkably similar to his own steel form, and with a grunt and through gritted teeth, he took another stomp-step forward, retracing his own path.

Wanda remained airborne, covered by their sheet that seemed the sole thing within the room not torn apart by her magic save herself, while she floated more like a ghost than a living, breathing person. Her body drifted as though in peace, but the furrow of her brow and the tension on her face gave away the fact that she was battling herself moreso than she truly was him; that whatever amalgamation of anger, sorrow, regret and guilt that had manifested itself within her own mind while she was asleep and vulnerable was able to reach her and _affect_ her in ways that he simply could not. 

Later, he might come to consider the implications of what that meant, but he couldn’t do anything but struggle with Vision’s powers as he attempted to push the limits on the synthezoid’s density manipulation, finding it lacking compared to his own organic metal, weaker, less able to overcome the buffeting barrier that kept Wanda from any sort of outside influence that might help her—And nyet, he would not think of whether he even could—And then it dawned upon him that he had been going about it the wrong way.

 **More** became _less_ and rather than be slammed backward a third time, he recalled the weightlessness that Katya could achieve and mimicked it with Vision’s nanites, sifting through the magic that sought to keep him away as he floated closer, the aurora that had been trying to bore into his reinforced body like a drill scattering past to hit the wall behind, sparking at the air around his head and torso trying to catch what simply scattered around the energy as he reached out a hand toward the sheets, trying to reach for her ankle in the hope that a physical touch could do what sound could not, to snap her back to the waking world.

And then the ringing in his head stopped. The mental intrusion vanished, and his hand was no longer gloved colorfully, but his own, true polished metal, segmented at and once between each finger. He reached for the sheet, grabbing ahold of a broken bed post..

And watched his hand catch fire. “Nyet—” He whispered his fear into the silence. “Stop, Wanda—” He didn’t want this power. He felt it consuming him, coating him in its embrace, but _he didn’t want this power_. “ _Please_ , wake up, **Nyet—** ” **He didn’t want this power**.

But it felt so _**right**_ to be emblazoned in the burnt-orange aura of the Phoenix Force. A flood of memories came rushing back from the sensation as Wanda’s magic remade him into what he once was—into the **foe** he once was—into _who he wanted to be_.

His mind shook but his hand remained steady, basking within the familiar warmth and the exhilarating rush of **power** that came with being a living manifestation of Creation. Destruction. Rebirth. They’d solved the world’s energy crisis, disarmed it completely of nuclear weapons, done so much good—And for what? For the Avengers to hate and fear them? For other mutants to distrust them?

For Wanda to stop them.

She’d been the only one they feared, individually and together. She’d been the only person capable of stopping them from doing everything they wanted to accomplish. It was only Wanda’s name whispered telepathically between them that caused Scott to doubt their strategy and have them fly off elsewhere around the world to escape her.

And there she was. Asleep. Alone. Without Hope or Rogue or any other mimicry-powered-person able to help her. Without the Avengers to moralize for her, reciting their insistence that they were dangerous and irrational.

“I—” How _easy_ it would be to reach out his hand and set her on fire and take back what he wanted. And _bozhe moi_ , he tried to lie to himself in the weeks and months since it left him, but he **did** want it. He’d had the ability to make changes in the world. Good, _permanent_ , **real** changes that no metal form ever could. No one ever cared what he thought as Colossus with all his strength, but as part of the Phoenix, **everyone** listened to every word he said. Everyone cared about every act he did.

And the power was his to take back, if only he just got rid of the one person in his way. The one woman he’d found kinship with in the months that followed, when he couldn’t even control his mutation. The one woman who had spent her whole life battling the same urges he had to better the world with her powers in whatever way she saw fit. The woman who had them now, who struggled with them still, imperfect but never giving up despite the many offers—the many _attempts_ —by others to snuff her out, to take away her burden, to take her power for themselves. To misuse what she spent so many days reminding herself not to.

He reached out again to touch her, hand still aflame. Wanda’s still-warring mind couldn’t decipher whether to allow the betrayal or deny the assistance to what struggle faced her still, and slammed him back into the metal barricade for the third time.

And then he opened his mouth: Not to speak, but to recite the energy-language with which he’d shared with the Electric Legion when he really _was_ imbued with the Phoenix Force, and not the seductive shadow of what Wanda’s chaos magic had created for him to be. The words flowed like electricity, streaking out from his mouth, down his shoulders and arms along his metallic frame, transferring into the walls as a whisper repeated itself in jagged, jolting streaks that were visible wherever the wall had been cracked and scarred by Wanda’s auroras, until they found the spots that were still in contact, streaking up as white-and-yellow electricity backfed using her own nightmare’s manifestation of her power to reach her form and travel harmlessly throughout her body.

For a moment, he was worried that he’d made a mistake: That perhaps Wanda couldn’t understand, nor speak, _electric_ without the aid of magic to consciously translate it.

But then the fire that hugged his frame abruptly died out, and the outward force keeping him at bay disappeared, leaving him to fall to his knees. Wanda’s gasp was the first sound allowed within the room since his sweet-nothing, and he wasn’t quick enough in his attempt to push himself back onto his feet and catch her before she hit the bed and immediately realized something was very, very wrong about their room.

“Oh—? Oh, no, no..” She whispered to herself, damned herself, pulling the sheet around her as she brought her legs up toward her chest and curled up upon the smaller section of their mattress’ remains, her arms shaking beneath the covers unrelated to the cold.

“It’s—” _Yebat_ , he could hear his voice again and just how strained it was and he didn’t want her to hear the pain in it but he didn’t know how to hide it, either, “—It’s okay, Wanda. It’s over. It’s over.” He kissed the top of her head and wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap on the floor beside their broken bed, the smell of reality disintegrated all around them, like the smell of sulfur.. sans the sulfur. He could not explain it, it was so unlike anything he knew, despite how distinctive a sensation it was to smell, to see. Pieces of their bedside table, their dresser, his weights, their bed were all simply _gone_ , others burnt to blackened soot, others turned seemingly to glass.. and if he had not had a variety of bodies of various enhanced durability, he suspected he would be partly gone, too. Or perhaps completely.

She had warned him to run if she ever lost control. She had **told** him to run but in the moment, he couldn’t bring himself to leave her to suffer. He brushed her hair away from her face and kissed her forehead and cradled her within his embrace, instead.

“You are awake. It’s okay.” _They_ both weren’t, but he tried to reassure her anyway as they were both still trying to process what happened. He could still feel the heat of the Phoenix’s flame on his fingertips, all over his body, and he was worried that he was **actually** still that hot and might scald her, might give away what she’d done to him.. and what he had wanted, himself. But she did not seem to notice anything unusual from being held close to him, voice strained as she started trying to explain, “I couldn’t stop—thinking about it—about all the mutants and then— _you_ and you as the phoenix and—” And her voice shook too much to finish the sentiment aloud, her hands still covering her face, trying to wipe away the tears that kept flowing while her breathing remained erratic and shaken.

“Shh.” He brushed back more of her hair, ran his thumbs under her eyes to help clear them so she could see him without the added blur.

“I—I told you to run, if this happened. Are you hurt? Oh, god—” She looked over his body, her hands reaching out to touch the red-raw spots on his arms, on his abdomen where her magic had burned him.. or something close to a burn, as his skin had been unmade by her magic, leaving the sinew and tissue beneath exposed and open as a wound, but without the blood that went with such trauma. It was grotesque to look at, he was certain, and he tried to guide her face back to him but she was determined to look upon what she’d done.

“I could have **killed** you Piotr, you can’t do this again, you can’t **be here** when it happens again—” She grabbed at his biceps, at his shoulders trying to stand up on shaky legs, exhausted from a lack of sleep and overexertion while sleeping both and when she faltered, he caught her and brought them both back down to the ground, now a stride further from their bed, closer to the center of their room’s wreckage.

“I will live,” He reassured her despite his own worries, his own self-doubt from being face to face with his own inner demons.

“But what if you **don’t** next time? I can’t—I can’t be responsible for killing someone I care about, I—” She was still trying to catch her breath and staunch the flow from her eyes and succeeding at neither, but gave up trying to distance herself from him for the moment if only because she was entangled by the sheet now and her legs were too shaky to carry her very far.

“I am Rasputin. We are hard to kill.”

“I’m _serious,_ Piotr.” Even though the sentiment did make her smile despite herself, sniffling as she did.

“So am I. Illyana’s magic helped. I will ask her to reinforce it. As long as your magic is unfocused, it seems I can endure.” As proven by the fact that he was still alive and there, with her, even if he was injured.. though, he did not bother to recount the other metal forms he took on in the interim. That was a discussion for later.

“It’s _still_ too dangerous, **I’m** dangerous Piotr, can’t you see that?”

“Da.” He pressed a palm to her face, guided it up to look at him, to match brown to blue. “That is why we met.” Really met, then, not just in passing in a fight, though that certainly helped to remind them of the other’s existence in the big, wide world of superheroes and villains. “Do you remember what I said, while you were dreaming?”

“I.. I think so. It wasn’t a sound, it was more like.. a thought that shocked me awake.” Her eyes narrowed, looking into his, recalling the oddity of an emotion conveyed without words so strong she felt it in her bones. He wasn’t a telepath.

“I meant it.” And with that much he was sincere, even though he still felt uneasy about his own willingness to consider the Phoenix’s power and what it suggested. Even knowing it was her magic turning against her, he had felt its pull.. and he hated that he’d even given a thought to doing as it wanted.

She only nodded, finally finding a calm with her breathing and no more streaks to wipe away from her cheeks. “I know. I just.. need time.” Time to think about what just happened, time to make sure it wouldn’t again.

“You need sleep.” _Actual_ sleep, not more nightmares. He pulled the covers out from where they were caught, between her and him both, and draped it back over them properly as he shoved debris away from the floor in a wide sweep of his arm for her to lay down on it. It was hardly well cushioned, but they’d both dealt with worse mid-mission before.

“We both do. I’m.. gonna sleep in. Will you stay?” She laid down in the spot provided, and raised the sheet up to make sure he joined her beneath it, which was about the only hint that she was going to give that she did not want to be alone, because her question was honest.

“Da. I’ll let them know I’ll be late.” He looked across the room, glanced at his phone, didn’t bother getting up to grab it. It didn’t appear damaged, by some small miracle, so he was still due to wake up early for the alarm.

He tried to give her some space beneath the covers, despite the limited availability from all the damage to the interior décor, but it didn’t take long for Wanda to find a way to turn his bicep into a pillow again, this time with her back nestled against his front while he kept an arm draped over her body, hands entwined against her chest.


End file.
